Accreditation is the process that is used to control quality of education in institutions of higher learning. Accreditation is the chief methods that higher learning institutions such as colleges and universities use to improve and ensure high quality education. There are four roles of accreditation as explained below.
Accreditation maintains and facilitates quality of higher education. Accreditation acts as the measure of the quality of education in higher educations. It achieves its objective by establishing a standard that all institutions are required to meet. This is ensured through its screening roles of candidacy for preliminary accreditation, eligibility and grant of first accreditation. It plays a major role that ensures those institutions of higher learning that do reflect proper academic and fiscal practices are not awarded accreditation status. Thus, they do not qualify to be granted the initial accreditation. Accreditation improves the quality of education in higher institutions since it makes institutions to keep on improving the quality of their education to receive accreditation status. Accreditation also provides regional and national opportunities where relevant higher education stakeholders meet so that to identify and execute their responsibility to enhance quality of higher education provided by institution of higher education. This mostly leads to producing a cadre of faculty and administrators who provide free-self regulation talents that are highly needed (Eaton, 2003).
Accreditation sustains academic value of higher education. The most important values of accreditation are institutional autonomy, commitment to degree education, academic freedom and governances of colleges. The highlighted values enable colleges to independently pursue diverse missions to serve different group of students. The accreditation of U.S. institutions of higher learning has enabled the differentiation of its higher education which has greatly boosted its quality to enable it to be ranked favorably worldwide (Eaton, 2003).
Accreditation helps in controlling the politicizing of higher education. The passion and wisdom of the state government to realize the importance of accreditation in guaranteeing academic quality of U.S. higher education has helped in regulating institutions and programs from undue political interferences such as faculty appointments.
Accreditation helps to address public needs and interest. Accreditation of the higher institution of learning is very beneficial to governments, students and families and also to employers in helping them make important decisions on pertaining to which institution to fund, credible institutions to join and who to hire. Most people and in particular student and families rate accreditation highly when they are selecting the program to pursue or the college or university to join. In addition, accreditation is very important to the federal state government since the accreditation status given to an institution determines the money the federal government allocates to the institution for student loans, grants or institution support. During employment, employers prioritize first those applicants who have graduated from accredited institutions and programs. In addition, they require their employees to enroll in accredited institutions so that they can support them financially while pursuing their further studies (Eaton, 2003).
One distinct aspect of the United State of America accreditation system is that it is not regulated by centralized government, but it is managed by private not-for-profit accreditation agencies. This makes the accreditation process in the United States not mandatory. Therefore, all the institutions of higher learning in U.S. don’t need to undergo the accreditation process to enable them carry out their day-to-day activities. The reason that motivates most institutions of high learning in U.S. to undertake accreditation process is so that they can be considered as credible institutions. This is because the government uses the accreditation status awarded to institutions of higher learning to identify those institutions to offer financial supports to help needy students. The federal government cannot offer a student financial support if he/she attends an institutions that have not been accredited. Another reason that makes institutions of higher learning in U.S. undergo accreditation is to increase the chances of their graduates getting employment opportunities with the renowned corporate. Most established firms will only hire graduates that have graduated from accredited institutions with accredited programs. Thus, even if the accreditation process is not mandatory in U.S. institutions of higher learning in U.S cannot avoid it, as they will be regarded as lesser credible institutions which will limit them attracting more students (Millard, 1987).
The Joint Commission is the body that is mandated with the accreditation of health care organizations. The commission does a very important task of ensuring that health care facilities in U.S. provide credible medical services to its citizens. It achieves this by ensuring a continuous improvement of the safety and quality of health care offered to public through provision of health care accreditation that is aimed at improvement of health care organizations. Apart from the great work that is associated with the accreditation process, accreditation of the healthcare organizations is accompanied by some weaknesses. One of the weaknesses identified is the mechanism that the commission uses (Shi & Singh, 2008). The process that the commission uses to guarantee that health care facilities meet certain set criteria and determine whether the healthcare organization receives Medicaid reimbursement is controversial. The process that the commission uses to award accreditation to healthcare facilities has not been agreed upon by the health organizations and has occasionally been challenged in court. Another weakness that is associated with accreditation of healthcare organizations is the conflict of interest that exists as the organization profits from consultations and documents sold to potential accreditation applicants. Some people argue that some hospitals may feel pressured to purchase services from a company that is affiliated with the same organization that is responsible for its accreditation and especially when the fate of Medicare reimbursement is at stake. The last weakness that is associated with healthcare accreditation is the huge cost that is associated with it (Jost, 1994).
Reference List
Eaton, J. (2003).The Value of Accreditation: Four Pivotal Roles. Web.
Jost, T. S. (1994). Medicare and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations: A healthy relationship. Law & Contemporary Problems, 57(4),1-5.
Millard, M. (1987). Relation of Accreditation to the States and Federal Government.” North Central Association Quarterly 62:361 – 379.
Shi, L., & Singh, D.A. (2008). Delivering health care in America: A systems approach. (3rd ed.). Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.